The survivor (8 page)

Jason wanted to be an inventor. "I invented a rocket one time," he told Adam. "I wasn't but about four or five years old, I guess, and I stole some of my father's shotgun shells and took out the powder and put it in this rocket I'd invented. It al-

most blew the back of our house off, but that rocket flew. It really did. It went way up."

Jason was a tinkerer, a mechanic. '*You should have seen me driving around in a car when I was only twelve years old," he bragged to Adam one night. "I got this old jalopy out of a junk heap and got it to run, but of course they wouldn't let me drive it. But I knew this guy who had a Hcense, so I put two steering wheels in the car and two sets of pedals and an extra accelerator. Then he could sit over in the driver's seat acting like he was driving and all the time I was driving. I think it bugged the cops."

Jason was a tank man. "I love tanks," he told Adam. 'Tou get inside that tin can on wheels and it makes you feel pretty good. I wish we'd gotten tanks sooner at Guadalcanal. I don't like it in the Hnes, down on your belly in the mud with nothing to stop all those bullets. In the line the bullets go over you whining and whistling and grunting, but in a tank they just go ping, ping, ping and there's so much noise in there anyway you hardly hear them."

Jason, Guns, the tech sergeant from the Com Section, the Rebel, the corporal who, when he got out of the Marine Corps, was planning to be an undertaker ("I won't have any problem with supply and demand," he explained) and was an expert on fortifications, the Pfc who wanted to be a forester, the Pfc who wrote a letter to his girl every night, knowing it wouldn't get mailed. Marines. But, slowly, as the voyage went on, people.

*This place is not fit for man nor beast," a marine declared, wiping the sweat off his bare chest with his hands and flicking it down on the already soaking wet deck.

"That's the stomp-down truth!" the Southerner said. "Ahm gonna write a letter to mah Congressman."

'Tou got a CongressmanP**

"Sho' Ah got a Congressman."

**Ifs a pity you can't write."

**Ah can make an X," the Southerner said.

Two of the days had passed, and Adam wondered how many more there were going to be. He didn't think he could endure many more.

"You're not paying attention," Jason told him. ''You've still got the attitude that this rifle is just a toy. Lieutenant. But one of these days you're going to be looking down the barrel and you're going to see one of 'em, and then it's going to be you—or him. And this"—he patted the rifle—"is what decides who it's going to be. So pay attention."

"Yassuh," Adam said, mocking the Southerner. "Ah'm givin you mah en-ti-ah attention."

"Lieutenant," the Southerner said, "you talk like that in Dixie and they take you and dip you in a barrel of hot tar and then in a barrel of duck feathers and then set you on a pole and ride you back across the Mason-Dixon line."

"Yassuh, boss," Adam said. "Ah'm goin' straighten up and flah raght."

"No use tryin' to teach him nothing about no rifle,

Jason," the Southerner decided. ''He got a meagah brain."

"Pay attention," Jason said, taking the rifle away from Adam and putting it to his shoulder. "Now whoever called it *pull the trigger didn't know any more about it than you do. You *pull' it and you don't hit anything. You squeeze it Not with just your finger. You squeeze it with all your fingers, with your whole hand, with your arm. Everything you are squeezes that trigger, because that's when it counts."

"I know something better to squeeze than a trigger."

"But theah ain't none of 'em heah," the Southerner said, "So you pay attention to Jason, because it ain't just you shooting to save yo' life. It may be you shootin' to save mah life. That's what makes it so important."

"Now the next thing, Lieutenant," Jason said, "is remember you're shooting the rifle, not the target. These sights are Httle, just a httle V here and a stick there, and they're close together. But the target's way out there. You ju5t can't see all three things clearly. If you can see the target clearly, you can't see the sights. But that's what a lot of guys do—they look at the target so hard their sights blur and they don't hit. So remember, look at the sights.'*

Adam took the rifle and aimed at the pressure dial of the torpedo tube.

Jason sat on the wet steel deck and observed him. Then he took the rifle back. "I guess I'd

better show you the four positions. Standing, kneeling, sitting, and prone. With the sling.''

"Now, Jason," the Southerner said, "tell me the truth now. Did you evah see any marine at all in the line shootin' from any of those positions? And did you evah see any marine use his sling for anything but to tote that gun with?^

"I never did," Jason admitted, 'l3ut they made me learn all those positions."

"Don't inflict the Heutenant with all that. Just teach him to make that gun part of his hand. Part of him. Because I don t think wheah we're going is going to be healthy. At all.**

The whole business still seemed unreal to Adam. Squatting in this submarine with a bunch of, by now, bad-smelling marines, learning how to shoot a rifle. He kept asking himself, "What am I doing here?" And there seemed to be no answer.

He was yawning now, and even Jason was beginning to drift oflF. But by this time Adam knew why and knew, with dread, that there were going to be some hoiu-s now which were going to seem absolutely endless. He was going to hve through an eternity of misery in the next few hours. He wondered if the marines who just passed out weren't luckier than he was?

The submarine was now far into the territory of the enemy, and without its torpedoes it was a helpless thing. It could not risk beiug seen by the enemy and so, at dawn of each day, it would submerge and stay submerged through the long,

bright day, coming up only after the sun was well down and the night dark.

The only other navy man the marines had any real contact with was an old chief torpedoman who thought the torpedo room was his personal kingdom. At first he blamed the marines for the foul air. "There's supposed to be seventy people breathing this air and there's air enough for them. Then you phony heroes come in here and make it ninety-two men all gulping the same air and fouling it up.**

But as each day was the same, the chief finally admitted that something was haywire with the auxihary air system and, until they fixed it, it was going to be rugged. (They never got it fixed.) The marines found out the first day that the chief had stuff that could absorb the carbon dioxide that was making them sick. They were little cakes, like soap, which he could spread around. But getting him to break them out and use them was almost useless. **These are for emergencies," he told them.

**What you think this is?" the Southerner demanded. "Ah m dyin', an' that's an emergency."

"Die," the chief said, "itll be good for you."

The hours under the water were torture. By noon you had a headache of such intensity that the pain disarranged everything you did. And as the oxygen grew more scarce, there wasn't much you could do. By midaftemoon the marines had stopped almost all movement. The talking died out, the card-playing drifted to a stop, reading or writing became too painful to endure. There was nothing they

THE DEEP, DARK SEA «5

could do but stand or sit or squat or, for the lucky-ones, lie down in the bunks or torpedo racks or on the deck.

Orderly thought gave way then to the fear which began in the late afternoon and kept building up, hour after hour.

'^Atmosphere."

Adam had never thought about it before. Atmosphere. It was just something that was always there, all around you. All around the whole world. Everybody had atmosphere so you didn't have to think about it.

But now, in these afternoons, the marines thought about it

The chief torpedoman had told them about "atmosphere." "Atmosphere," the chief had said, "is just air. But in a submarine atmosphere is all the air there is in the boat. When we submerge we take aboard as much air as we can, and that, friend, is all there is—there ain't no more. Now you Gyrenes keep horsing around and telling all these stories about how you're heroes, and that uses up the atmosphere."

'Where do hit goF* the Southerner asked him.

''It goes into CO2," the chief told him. "Carbon dioxide. The same stuff that puts out fires—and it'll put you out, too. Now you take ordinary atmosphere, the stuff you breathe outside, that's only got three hundredths of one per cent of carbon dioxide. But by the time you Gyrenes get through teUing everybody how great you are, the CO2 count

goes way up—maybe two, two and a half per cent."

"How far can it go?" Adam asked him.

*'Now, that I don't know," the chief said. "All the way, I guess, but the important thing is how far can you go. Some guys I know pass out when the CO2 count goes above two point five. Some can stand it as high as two point eight. But nobody can stay conscious when it hits three, and at four per cent you're dead."

So that became a sort of grisly game—listening to the occasional reports which came in to the marines through the loudspeaker on the bulkhead. Somebody would give an order: "Test atmosphere." Then the marines would wait, all of them staring at the loudspeaker, until the loudspeaker would answer. "Atmosphere reads carbon dioxide one point eight ..." or nine or, once, two per cent.

By sundown the air would become so foul that, to Adam, the Hght bulbs seemed to be burning inside a gray, thick fog. Some of the marines would pass out on the deck and there was nothing you could do for them—they only needed air, and there wasn't any more. Their faces, Adam noticed, gradually turned from a pink flesh color to a dull, light gray and, by nightfall, blue. No one smoked because there wasn't enough oxygen to keep a flame burning.

Adam had never realized before how blessed air could be. Just the opening of a small round steel door became, to the marines, the greatest event in their Hves. It was something they looked forward

THE DEEP, DARK SEA S7

to hour after hour, something they prayed would happen—and happen soon. As the days went on, the miserable and endless days, three words got to be more important to them than any they had ever waited for. Adam became convinced that every marine in the boat would rather hear those three words than, say, "Here's a million dollars."

They waited all day to hear them—and some, overcome by the lack of oxygen, never did hear them—and tibe last hour of waiting always felt as though it could not be endured but at last a voice would say, "Open the hatch."

Then the air would pour down on them. Sweet, cool, fresh air—all you wanted of it. Tasting and smelling of the open ocean. Good, clean, fine air. At the order to open up, the marines—those who could move—would crowd in under the hatch, their faces upraised and waiting for the first inrush of the air. It made no difference to them if it was pouring rain or if the sea was rough and salt water spattered down on them, they kept their faces up to gulp in the fine air.

But each day, until the air gave out, Jason spent the hours trying to make a combat marine of Adam.

"Remember, Lieutenant," Jason began, *'your feet are the most important part of you. Keep 'em clean, and keep clean socks on 'em and see that your shoes fit. A lot of guys get killed because their feet get so sore and rotten they can't run fast enough."

"I'll do that," Adam said. It was a night, the pumps were circulating the good air through the

boat and he and Jason, had, for a change, a little room. Most of the marines were up on the after platform of the sub, crowded together in the small place, but at least able to look up at the stars and the moon and clouds, and look around without seeing a steel wall. "Listen, Jason," Adam said, "how about knocking off the lieutenant' stuff. That's for parades, and I don't think we're going to be parading much. My first name's Adam. WHiat's yours?"

"I'd rather just be called Jason," Jason said. "My first name's Harold."

"I don't much blame you.**

"You know, I was telling you about the first-aid kit," Jason said, and Adam wondered why his voice suddenly sounded a little timid, shy. "Remember, if somebody gets hit, don't use your own kit on him. Use his. That way, when you get hit your buddy will have yours to use on you. That's important." He stopped for a moment and then said, quietly, "That is if you have a buddy."

"That guy—what was his name, Rivers?—meant a lot to you, didn't he?" Adam asked.

"Brooks was his name," Jason said and then looked over at the torpedo tube. "Well, he was my buddy. You've got to have a buddy. They taught us that in boot camp, and they were right. Without a buddy you're nothing. You're all by yourself. It's like this," Jason said, turning back to Adam, "one man can only do what one man can do, but—and I don't know why it is—two men can do as much as

four or five. I don t know why that is. You just get a lot more fighting done with a buddy."

Adam had no intention of doing any fighting at all. He hadn't joined up to do this personal kind of fighting, this hand-to-hand stufi Jason had been trying to teach him. It wasn't that Adam was afraid of getting killed or anything like that. Your chances of living in a plane were no better than those of a man on the groimd. But in a plane it was an impersonal thing—it was the plane. That did the fighting, you just drove it. Adam really couldn't imagine what it was like to fight on the ground, one man against another.

*What was it like on Guadalcanal?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know," Jason said. *1 guess I had the wrong idea. You know, going to the movies and all. It wasn't much Hke that. You know these guys in the movies get hit and this pretty girl comes out of nowhere and takes care of him and aU that." Jason began to laugh. *'And they're so clean—in the movies. Oh, maybe they've got a couple smudges of mud way up on their cheekbones or something. On Guadal you weren't ever clean. I mean, your clothes were rotting oflF you and you were rotting inside them. We were dirty. I don't know, it seems like they always arrange it so you're about as uncomfortable as you can get. Like this." He waved his hand around at the steel walls.